Mrs. Charming and Rested wants and deserves a better camera. She uses a point and shoot now but has a good eye for pictures. She would like a digital SLR that offers better ability to take wildlife photos and portraits with the cool blurred background from short depth of field. I think a larger frame sensor, though not necessarily full frame sensor, would be best.
Here is my leading candidate, as a nice all in one package, the Nikon D3500 with 18-55 and 70-300mm zoom lenses. They aren’t fast lenses but at this price point, they seem like decent quality. Anybody have other better suggestions or reasons I shouldn’t pick this one? I’ll probably buy one in the next day or so ahead of our trip to the beach next week.
You should consider mirrorless camera systems, if size is an issue. They are smaller but equally featureful and fast. You don’t need a DSLR to get the results she’s seeking.
I wouldn’t go with the package deal on lenses. Better off buying a single higher quality lens than two just average ones. Glass is more important than camera bodies, less so now that previously, but it’s still better to have a single good lens than a range of poor ones.
Probably your biggest decision is whether to go Nikon or Canon. Down the road you’ll certainly be buying more/different lenses, so it’s well worth looking at the offerings in the various types you may want, and their capabilities and prices. I don’t know if there’s any file type/software differences myself.
Yup. I’d pick out the lens first, and then get the back that goes with it- the backs aren’t that dramatically different in capability/won’t make a huge difference in the quality of the photo, but your lens absolutely will.
If she’s going to do much in the way of wildlife pictures, a good zoom is an absolute must. The overwhelming majority of wildlife is too skittish to let a person get close, so zoom makes up the difference. Otherwise, she’s going to have picture after picture that may be excellent from a technical perspective, but the subject will be far too small for it to be a subjectively “good” picture.
Does the camera “need” to be a DSLR? If not, I would strongly recommend a bridge camera. I’ve had this one for about 3 years. It has a 600mm-equivalent zoom lens built in. It has a feature that is very nearly genuinely unique. Virtually all zoom lenses have a narrowed aperture,which means that less light comes in. This can be a major problem when you need a fast shutter speed – and for wildlife, you usually need a fast shutter. But this camera maintains a constant 2.8 F-stop throughout the entire zoom range!
There’s optical compromise involved in designing lenses, particularly wide angle or fast lenses, and leaving enough room between the lens and the sensor for a mirror to swing up out of the way. Mirrorless cameras make this issue completely go away.
I recently bought a Fujifilm XT-30 II, and I love it! $880 for the body. I have an 18-135 Fujifilm zoom that covers most needs, though that does exceed a $1000 total.
Yeah, it would be hard to keep within the budget with that camera. Also, I think that camera is more for an advanced shooter, with all the fiddly knobs and buttons (which I absolutely love – I have the original XT-30. I think we discussed it on another thread).
This really isn’t true. Nikon and Canon make excellent cameras, but they are relatively recent entrants to the mirrorless world. They have some fantastic offerings, but I don’t think you’ll stay within $1000, including a long lens. Sony has been at it for a long longer in mirrorless space.
The issue here will be the small sensor size, so you won’t get much in the way of blurred backgrounds, which the OP is specifically looking for. That camera has a sensor about 1/8 the size of a APS-C mirrorless.
Blurred background, or lack thereof, depends heavily on the depth of field. An F/2.8 gets you a very shallow depth of field. You must have missed the first picture that I posted.
My wife and I have 3 cameras we use, all Nikon. A D5600, a D7100 and a Z6 mirrorless. We have 11 lenses for the 2 DSLRs and only 1 for the mirrorless. This had to do with the cost of lenses, the mirrorless lens we have cost almost $2000. The same lens for the DSLRs was only $350. The lenses are not interchangeable between the 2 formats. Being that the OP suggested a D3500, my guess he is looking for something at a lower price point. I have my old D3400 that I would be willing to give away but it needs the mirrors adjusted after a tiger cub knocked it out of my hands. A local camera store quoted me $200 to fix the camera then offered me the same to trade it in. That is when I bought the D5600. After ringing up the sale with the $200 discount, the salesman said he really didn’t want my old camera and he gave it back to me.
I was talking DSLR specifically. The point is what lens ecosystem you choose to be part of- Canon and Nikon have different lenses/different price points, etc… so it’s worth knowing what you want to do, and then choosing the lens ecosystem that fits that better.
I would be hesitant to hitch myself to one of the lesser manufacturers (Pentax, Sony, Fuji, etc…); their lens offerings are likely to be fewer and/or less capable than Nikon or Canon, mirrorless or DSLR. Unless of course, they are compatible with Nikon or Canon lenses.
I have a D3500, it’s a nice camera and that bundle price seems like a pretty good deal. It you want that body you’d better grab it now because Nikon has discontinued the D3500. The lenses are more than decent–I trust Ken Rockwell’s reviews and he gives them both high marks. Frankly, I don’t think you can go wrong with any of the suggestions here. In the end the camera and lenses are tools and the skill of the photographer is just as important when it comes to creating great images. Galen Rowell shot some really terrific pictures using a Yashica T4 point and shoot.
The advice about focusing on (ha!) the lens first, then the body, seems sound to this very amateur photographer. If you want shallow depth of field you’ll need the widest lens apertures.
When we bought the Z6 the adaptors were still kind of sketchy. They appear to have improved since then. We use our Z6 with a 200-500mm lens and use it mainly for long distant shots. That is one of the reasons we kept both of our other cameras, we can switch out the lenses much quicker. I am thinking about a Tamron 28-200 for the Z6, a local camera store has them on sale. The price of mirrorless lenses have come down some since they were introduced.
Mirrorless cameras are the future, but DSLRs are not going away anytime soon and are, truthfully, more than enough camera for the vast majority of us, particularly a beginner. And frankly, your budget of 1k is not going to get it done with a mirrorless system.
All is not lost. I’d be willing to be that she will be thrilled with the capabilities and the results obtained from a DSLR. I would stick with Nikon or Canon, simply because of the number of lenses and accessories available.
An adequate “wildlife” lens is going to eat up half (at the very least) of your budget. My suggestion would be to decide on the lens first; this will guide you toward how much camera you can buy. Don’t rule out buying used - look at the used bodies available on B&H Photo or Adorama (both companies are extremely reliable). Or, go with a slightly older model as you’ve indicated in your OP, I really don’t think you will be pining for a mirrorless once you get your hands on a solid DSLR.
Canon are well ahead of the competition in mirrorless now. They started with high end lenses a couple of years ago, but they are now coming out with a much more affordable range. If you can stretch your budget to $1600, that will get you the EOS RP body and the RF100-400mm f5.6-8. This is at the entry level end, but it’s the entry level end of Canon’s state-of-the-art full frame mirrorless system, and shares much of the technology with the best cameras and lenses available at any price right now. You need the 400mm reach for wildlife, and this is a full frame 26MP sensor - you will be able to crop considerably without noticeable loss in quality, giving you a much greater effective reach. All the reviews report very fast and accurate autofocus with this lens, critical for moving wildlife. This setup will blow away anything else mentioned in this thread for wildlife.
Sony has worked their way up to being one of the big boys in amateur photography. Canon and Nikon may beat them in the professional support category, but they’re not niche like Pentax or Fuji. The A7 series is probably the best all around general purpose camera system there is for a reasonable entry price, or at least was a year ago when I researched and bought one.
This is only true up to a point for wildlife. You do want decent tracking autofocus.
At the distances you are shooting wildlife you’re going to get a blurred background even at f/11. I mean, a 400mm f/2.8 is nice, but that’s 10 times the OP’s budget.
